Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/164

 truth. "I'd never knowed he had that money if he hadn't said ten thousand wasn't enough."

He dared not turn out his light to go to sleep. He found but fitful slumber in the cabin. When the sunshine of morning followed the dawn, he was able to go to sleep, and toward noon he awakened moderately refreshed. After breakfast and a pot of strong black coffee he wondered at his nervousness and strapped the money-belt around him without a qualm.

He went on up the river, still undetermined what he would do. He needed time to think; luck had broken his way, with some assistance, and he could not make up his mind what he ought to do. His mind was about equally divided between relief from worry about his future meals and the threat which hung over him—not quite banished from the background of his thoughts.

"When you've killed a man," he admitted to himself, "you ain't safe. You never know when something'll break wrong. But nobody knowed what we 'lowed to do. Not a whisper to anybody. Not without he said sunthin'. He mout of said sun thin' to the bank; I hadn't thought of that."

He had sunk the evidence of his crime in the depths of a river bend, where a crime is little apt to return in court evidence, but he had not counted on the fact that he himself would know all about it. Knowing